easter in latvia

Last Easter I was in Vietnam, which doesn't celebrate it, and so I had a bit of a short long weekend. This year however it's an entirely different proposition. Sweden celebrates Easter with eggs, bunnies and witches and the usual 4-day weekend. (This isn't quite as good as Norway which has a 5-day weekend, but never mind, four days is enough).

After chatting to a friend from work, Feodor, I was invited to go to Rīga, Latvia, with him and a few others. This is very Australian thing to do I think: hit Europe and waste no time in trying to see as much as possible.

A few minutes later I was on airBaltic's site I found what I was looking for: a 5kr flight direct to Rīga. Five krona is around $1, can't do much better than that! We stayed in the "Metropole" hotel, famous in Rīga for being the only hotel that stayed open through-out Soviet and Nazi occupations of Latvia. In fact these occupations of Latvia have not been as disastrous on the local infrastructure as has occurred elsewhere.

Rīga comprises of "Old Rīga" which is pre-1900's and "New Rīga" which is 1900's onwards. Old Rīga is world heritage listed as it has well preserved examples of buildings from the 12th to the 19th century.

After the advent of gun-powder, city walls went out of fashion. In Rīga they turned land freed up by this into a series of canals and parkland. So the old town is now surrounded by wide cobble stoned boulevards with trams rolling along them, parkland and canals. It really was a picturesque town.

Over the canal, and past the freedom monument, is New Rīga, which has it's own architectural delights. In the early 1900's there was an art moment called Art Nouveau, or really when you are talking about the German inspired version it's called Jugendstil. It incorporates lots of long flowing lines, flower-like designs, and in Rīga there are faces incorporated into the designs. An example of this architecture in Melbourne is the City Baths.

The weather went crazy over the weekend too, and put on a real show for us. It snowed like it was the middle of winter.

The snow only served to enhance the city's beauty further. Did it matter that I don't have any clothes suitable for snow? Not really - when the worst of the came we could always pop inside for a beer.

Being a Baltic state, Latvia has a reputation for cheap alcohol. Although it's far cheaper than Sweden (2 pots cost me $20 in Sweden last night!), it isn't any cheaper than Australia. One Latvian lats is equal to $2.5 - not very favourable for the Australian tourist. Not that it deterred us. Some good nights out were had :-)

a new year, a new continent

Europe? Yep. Sweden? Yup, for 6 months. A thank-you is first up. Thanks for work for sending me here (although, I still have to work ;-) but also in being flexible in allowing me to stick around until March so I could attend Lawrence and Michelle's wedding - which was an excellent event. Many best wishes for the future Lo and Shell.

Now I'm in Göteborg (Gothenburg), Sweden, which is approximately 15,000km from Melbourne. The furthest I've been from Australia to date! Realistically its about as far as I can go from Australia without coming back around the other-side of the globe! So, a new continent to visit: Europe.

Taking off from Melbourne I was apprehensive... I had an aisle seat! From my experience on Melbourne-Sydney flights, aisle seats were bad, as the food trolleys hit your arms and legs if they stuck out a little bit. Turns out that's just a Qantas thing, and I didn't get hit at all.

With a 25 hour trip ahead of me I planned to sleep, and sleep a lot. I didn't end up sleeping as much as I thought, maybe only half of the trip. I spent most of the rest of the time writing a document for my family describing how to fix the home network if a server or two died while I'm away!. Thrilling stuff. Gladly I had a business-class flight from Bangkok to København (Copenhagen). As we took off from Bangkok the pilot announced there were snow storms in København at the moment, but "these should clear up by the time we get there". These snow storms have not disappointed. It's been cold and snowy ever since! From København to Göteborg it's only 30 minutes by plane. We were shuffled onto a small-ish McDonald-Douglas MD-81 where the only difference between a business-class and economy-class seat was that you got a croissant for breakfast. We even had to walk across a frozen tarmac to get the flight. Before take-off the plane had to have its' wings de-iced by a special de-icing truck.

Now I'm going to get all fancy and multi-media-ish and have a video in the blog:

That's the landing at Göteborg. It looked very, very cool coming in over the snow. I also was able to take a few photos from the air of what might be considered to be a typical Swedish rural scene:

The snow is amazing. Being an Aussie, I haven't seen snow like this in a city before! Only on mountains and stuff. Of course the locals are ready for spring and are a bit annoyed with this cold snap - they'd already put their coats away for the season. Shops have also put away their winter stock (or sold out), which is a bit frustrating, I was hoping to buy some cold-weather gear here.

Due to the length of my stay I'm staying in a furnished apartment. It's very nice, and the location is great. It's located near the centre of town (approximately CBD to Carlton type distance in Melbourne terms). Göteborg has a wonderful public transport system including an extensive tram network. The town is small enough that there are no suburban trains, just buses and trams. I've got the choice of 5 different tram routes to catch to my place, and even more bus routes. My apartment is on the top story (the 5th) of the building and has a great view down towards a church:

As I'm writing this it's Good Friday holiday here and it's snowing again for the first time since arriving. The view up to the church looks a bit different when covered in snow.

This long weekend I'm heading to Rīga, Latvia, with a few other engineers from Melbourne. The engineers aren't in Göteborg, but I contacted them as I knew they were in Sweden and they already had this trip planned. It should be excellent. The entire centre of Rīga has been world heritage listed by UNESCO as the best example of Art Nouveau architecture. There's also cheap booze :-)

Sweden has a reputation for expensive booze. Now I'm not sure if the Australian dollar is unusually strong against the Swedish Krona, but really the prices are almost comparable to Australia. A pint in the pub on my first night in town was pricey at $10-ish dollars (but then in Melbourne it's not unusual to pay $8 these days). The bottle store was better $24ish for 12 bottles of beer. That's better pricing than Australia where a 6-pack is usually $15. Sweden has a tightly controlled alcohol market. The only way you can buy heavy beer, wine, or spirits is through a government owned chain of outlets called Systembolaget. The government says that "the monopoly is to lower the consumption and the damage alcohol does on the public health". Personally I think this is just crap, they run like a post offices: closing at 6pm on weekdays, 2pm on Saturdays, and not even opening on Sundays. Sure it might lower consumption but now they have to beef-up their customs operations to catch alcohol smugglers!

Anyway, it's Easter time, and sure these days you might be forgiven for thinking that Jesus was fluffy bunny that broke all biological rules to pop out a chocolate egg before being resurrected for a another public holiday (that makes sense right? :-) but here in Sweden, it's even more confusing. It still has little to do with Christian beliefs (*phew*). Children dress as witches because in Sweden witches flew off on broomsticks to dance with the devil at Blåkulla around this time of year. Nice eh? So now we have witches, broomsticks, chocolate, bunnies, eggs. But wait, there's more: they also add a liberal dose of brightly coloured feathers and cook heaps of marzipan. Yum Yum.

Did someone say Easter is a time for sober reflection? Not around me they didn't. *grin*

Oh yeah, better chalk up beer number 1 in the Swedish leg of the beer challenge. Well there was another one, but the photo didn't turn out well. I'll just have to drink that one again. Good times.